LED Grow Light Review

[Tead]

Yes... yes... let the war of words flow. I dance in the wreckage with devastation as my serenade!

Ok... I've taken a dark turn... time for bed.

Cheers!

[HydroGrowLED]

I'm currently running 1512W of LED over a 5' x 6' canopy (22 plants SOG). I personally designed the lights, and I also publish the NM I use without an issue.

Anyhow, the oldest plants in the pictures below, will be ready to harvest in 3-4 weeks.

[HydroGrowLED]

Originally Posted by bigtires001

Nice Grow! I am pretty happy with my store bought LED's there in the same casing as yours but no custom spectrum. I am glad to see such a commercial like grow with LED!!

I wonder what all the nay sayers of LED are thinking??????

Just about everyone uses the same casing, but what LED's make up the light are where there are major differences. Aside from the spectral differences, I also use way more intense LED's than any other company, which allows for penetration all the way to the bottom of the plant. Most companies give you a 120 degree light, we make a 60 degree light. With their lights (and you know this already) 30-40% of the light created ends up on your walls where there are no plants. Our lights target all of that light downwards towards your canopy. My grow is one of several large-scale LED grows currently going on around here. My friends are loving the new lights.

[HydroGrowLED]

Originally Posted by bigtires001

Yeah OK, I definatly get you on the 60 degree versus wide angle led. However in my specif senario, the walls are so close to plants Im prolly gettting 90% of my light

I checked out your site I like the selection, however heres my question. Your 63w system comes in the same case as my 120 watter. it has 114 1 watt led. why don't you max that container out and put in the 114 led's?

I ask this becasue I considered your lights but space is an issue for me. i don't wanna put a 63w light in the place where i could put a 120w

You've got an odd light then lol. Most MFR's make a 112 LED or 119 LED model for their "120W". If you look at our 126W Panel (the most comparable to their 120W), it is much larger, allowing for the light to cover more area with the 60 degree lens. When using 60 degree LED's, it is important to space them out in order to achieve a respectable coverage area per watt, and to do so evenly. If I were to cram 119 LED's into the same board as my 63W, then I'd still have the same footprint, but with way too much power. I had a design like that originally, which can be seen on my site. It was my beta light prior to my production models. My 119W light did a GREAT job at growing plants, but it had far too small a coverage area (especially in terms of cost). I saw right away that it could compete with a 400W HID no problem, but there was no way anyone would buy it if it could only cover 1' x 1.5'. Instead, the 126W covers 3' x 2', and beats a 400W without an issue. It has a much more respectable coverage area per watt, which gets difficult to achieve when you use narrow beam LED's.

Anyhow, most people are using at least an 8 square foot grow space (4' x 2'), where they want to spread the wattage they have evenly over their area, instead of cramming it into 1 central source, and making it shoot out in all directions. We want people to use "sheets" of LED's over their plants, and get away from the central light for an entire room concept. It's almost like the difference between using a single 1000W light, or 3, 400W lights. Granted, if you're growing in a tiny area, and want a lot of light within that space (almost 100W LED per square foot), I could always make you another beta light lol. But as it sits, the 63W gives you about 30-40W LED per square foot, depending on height. The 126W gives you 20W - 35W LED per square foot, and the 318W gives you 40 - 55W LED per square foot. That's a lot of light within each unit's coverage area, which guarantees that you'll always have great results. If I used 120 degree LED's, in an enclosed area, even if the light does bounce off the walls, it is still not as bright of light as what is emitted in a 60 degree beam. Penetration is key to a successful bloom.

[HydroGrowLED]

3W LED's have a lower lumen per watt rating vs 1W LED's. It's commonly misinterpreted that 3W or 5W LED's can actually carry light energy farther than a 1W LED, however if you call any major LED MFR (Cree, Luxeon, Osram), they will tell you that it is not true. They will also tell you that in terms of lumens per watt, it is currently a lot more efficient to use multiple 1W LED's, sometimes by more than double! So while 3W and 5W LED's are nice in theory, they're not currently practical in application.

A few of my customers thus far are growing in small closets/boxes that are no more than 2' wide, and no more than 4' long. When they want to pack the most power into their area, I recommend the 318W. In my opinion, using any more LED light per square foot than what it puts out, is overkill. Depending on how large of an area you will be growing with, I would make a personal recommendation to you about how to setup your lights and which to use. If you still wanted to do things differently, I'd have no problem making a couple of custom units for you. I already have all of the design work finished and tested, it's pretty easy to get more made. Based on your plant height though, you'll likely want to use a 30 degree LED, unless you don't care about the bottom 12" of your plant. It's not that the 60 degree can't go that far, it's just that when it gets there it doesn't have much energy left to penetrate the lowest buds, meaning they will be rather small.

[HydroGrowLED]

The 318W is 34" long, so do you have a 30" area? As far as the cases go, they're the same as you find anywhere else, but my competitors put 300W on the same board as my 126W, and 600W on the same board as my 318W. The side thickness is only about 2" all the way around, and the light itself is 3.5" thick (heatsink, LED's, plexiglass, power supplies, fans). Anyhow, at what height do you begin bloom? I personally start at 18", and my plants never top 3', although most stay under 2.5'. I top them about 3x before they go into bloom, making nice little bushes with lots of head colas.

[Droopy Dog]

I've been watching this thread and also SFHaze's Journal using the Haight LED set up.

Anyone else use the Haights? They recently became a 420 sponsor. Questions there also, like is their heat sinking so good, that's why they don't use fans? I'd be talking about that, WHY they don't need fans

I've been following LEDs somewhat for years, but mostly in terms of flashlights a la candlepowerforums.

I'm sold on LED, but still, there are a lot of questions here and not many hard answers.

DD

[HydroGrowLED]

Originally Posted by Droopy Dog

I've been watching this thread and also SFHaze's Journal using the Haight LED set up.

Anyone else use the Haights? They recently became a 420 sponsor. Questions there also, like is their heat sinking so good, that's why they don't use fans? I'd be talking about that, WHY they don't need fans

I've been following LEDs somewhat for years, but mostly in terms of flashlights ah la candlepowerforums.

I'm sold on LED, but still, there are a lot of questions here and not many hard answers.

DD

LED's are chips, which require certain operating temperatures in order to achieve maximum brightness, and longevity. Failure to operate a LED at it's appropriate temperature can result in drastically reduced life and lumen output. Think of a LED chip like your computer processor: if it didn't have a heatsink on top of it to get rid of the heat it creates, and then a fan to pull the heat off the heatsink, the processor would run much slower, and eventually burn up. It's the same thing with LED's: you run em hot, and they'll burn out over twice as fast. This would be great if I wanted people coming back to me in 2 years to buy another panel, but I'd rather they be able to get 5+ years out of our lights.

Our 126W unit measures 19" x 12.5" and weighs 20lbs. Over 10lbs of that, is taken up by our high quality heatsink that is attached to the back of the LED board. We also use high quality Japanese made cooling fans, to make sure that they operate flawlessly, and economically for years to come. Our design allows you to get longer life from the LED's, and allows them to achieve maximum brightness, which is why you get a 3 year warranty with our product. Marijuana has peak absorption points at 439nm, 469nm, 642nm, and 667nm, with peak Carotenoid absorption points at 439nm and 483nm. Missing any of these points will have a dramatically negative effect on the outcome of your crop. We give you 440nm, 470nm, 640nm, 660nm, 740nm, and 3000k white.

I'd be more than happy to facilitate some sort of friendly grow-off between our panel and theirs (depending on whether or not they'd accept the challenge), so you all can see the difference. It would be nice to find a good member from this forum who could carry out the test. I'd want to put my 126W against their PPF-800 (that's a 126W $400 panel vs a 186W $750 panel). As it is already, watt per watt, we come out about $2 cheaper ($450 for 90W Haight = $5/W, $400 for 126W = $3.17/W), so it would make it a lot of fun for me to have the cheaper panel come out on top. We're confident in what our light can do, I hope they are equally as confident in theirs.

And by the way, any questions you have, I'd be more than happy to answer. I'm extremely knowledgeable when it comes to LED's and growing plants with them.

[Bolivar]

HydroGrow, what's the explanation of the folks who had good results vegging with LED lamps, but couldn't get decent flowering with them? I just recently read a journal here where the guy basically gave up after an excellent start to his grow because he couldn't get them to really flower. (Sorry, don't remember whose lamps he was using.)

[HydroGrowLED]

Originally Posted by Bolivar

HydroGrow, what's the explanation of the folks who had good results vegging with LED lamps, but couldn't get decent flowering with them? I just recently read a journal here where the guy basically gave up after an excellent start to his grow because he couldn't get them to really flower. (Sorry, don't remember whose lamps he was using.)

First, it's hard to group LED's together, as there are literally hundreds of combinations that make up the grow lights you see on the market. Some lights are only red/blue, others are red/blue/white, others are red/blue/orange, then you have quad-band, 5-band, and a whole bunch of other "band" branding going on, where they refuse to tell you the spectral output of their lights.

Anyhow, the main reason most LED lights aren't capable of flowering well, although they work alright in bloom, is that they lack 660nm, which is the main drive engine for flowering. A lot of companies just give you 630nm, which barely stimulates one type of chlorophyll, as the absorption point for our plants is at 642nm, not 630. So a plant can carry out vegetative growth without 660nm (although it won't be anywhere near as good as it is with 660nm), but it can't do without it for bloom. The reason why other lights don't bloom well, even though they contain a 660nm LED, is that they use 120 degree LED's, which lack the intensity needed to penetrate your canopy. Without penetration, you can never have large, dense colas. Either that, or they had horribly improper ratios of colors. And by the way, anyone trying to sell you a light with orange, is just after your money.

[Droopy Dog]

Thanks. I'll have questions, but need to get my thoughts organized so I don't sound like a total idiot.

The grow off sounds like a really neat idea.

DD

[Bolivar]

Just doing some calculations in my head, I can see that 3 of the 63W units placed side-by-side in a row (long axis of the units perpendicular to the long axis of the grow tubes) would probably be a nice coverage for an AeroFlow2 18, which is the system I'm about to start using. I've already got HID set up, but now I'm thinking about trying LEDs once I get a complete grow under my belt.

[Droopy Dog]

I'm looking at a 4'x4' ebb and flood, SOG, cuttings at ~6" to flower.

DD

[HydroGrowLED]

Originally Posted by Bolivar

Just doing some calculations in my head, I can see that 3 of the 63W units placed side-by-side in a row (long axis of the units perpendicular to the long axis of the grow tubes) would probably be a nice coverage for an AeroFlow2 18, which is the system I'm about to start using. I've already got HID set up, but now I'm thinking about trying LEDs once I get a complete grow under my belt.

Yes, the 63W units are fairly narrow, making them excellent light sources for those types of aero systems. With LED you'll have higher chances for success, as there is no heat stress to worry about, you can get the lights nearly as close as you like, and your plants use less water (not to mention the power savings).

[BWC BayArea]

This has been a debate on this site for some time. By all means if u have had great success and know what ur doing with LEDs PLEASE start a journal >Journals in Progress - 420 Magazine. If u can back up ur claim that ur light can do what Tortured Soul can do with a 400W we need to see this. U will probably have one of the more popular journals for having mastered somethin no one else here seems to have done. LEDs don;t seem to finish well for NE 1 else. Please share bigtires001, now I'm intrigued. HydrogrowLED if u have something to share please do. U can start a journal too. I'm not trying to be facetious, I'm serious.